Pattern Aided Design

[David]

Hey,

I'm just looking for some advice regarding pattern making. Okay so I admit it. I dropped out of first year Fashion School... What can I say? I had better things to do, not that I can remember what they were, but that's another small hilarious story.

Grading?! I've always done all of my patterns by hand on card, but I don't think I can grade all of patterns manually. So I've found out about P.A.D.

http://www.padsystem.com/
http://www.padsystem.co.nz/

Master Digit V 4.6 = $3900nzd
PAD Elite = $6900nzd

ooh la la...Can you buy second hand versions? dunno, you might.

I had a chit-chat to these guys:

http://www.stirlingcutting.co.nz/

They do Digitising and Grading for approximately $7.50nzd a piece with a $12.00nzd set up fee depending on how many pieces/difficulty etc (I think I got those prices around the right way). They also do Cardboard Pattern Cutting at $2.50nzd per piece.

They sell plotters as well for printing out the patterns, a 100cm wide plotter will set you back $8500nzd, 180cm wide plotter $10500nzd.

So I'm probably going to go with using Stirling Cutting services and get it done for me the first few times and then maybe in a year or two invest in the program. There's also fiddly things like shrinkage to take into consideration and adding 10%, or what ever, may actually minus 10% off my remaining brain cells.

Do you guys have any tips or recommendation's? Speak up now. Hear hear!